FLUSHING Mdws
New York, NY 11355
Louis Armstrong Stadium is a tennis stadium of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and is one of the venues of the U.S. Open, the last of each year's four Grand Slam tournaments. The Center is located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, in the New York City borough of Queens. Armstrong was the main stadium before Arthur Ashe Stadium opened in 1997, and is now the No. 2 stadium. It is named after the noted jazz musician Louis Armstrong, who lived nearby until his death in 1971.HistoryThe stadium was originally built as the Singer Bowl for the 1964 New York World's Fair, and hosted special events and concerts afterwards. In the early 1970s, the United States Tennis Association was looking for a new place to host the U.S. Open as relations with the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, which had hosted the tournament, were breaking down. The USTA was initially unable to find a sufficient site, but the association's incoming president, W.E. Hester saw the old Singer Bowl from the window of an airplane flying into LaGuardia Airport. The old, long rectangular stadium was heavily renovated and divided into two venues, becoming the square Louis Armstrong Stadium, with the remaining third becoming the attached Grandstand, the third largest stadium at the US Open, with a seating capacity of about 6,000.